The Late Late Show host talks to Róisín Ingle about becoming a different kind of presenter and loving his job more now than he did before
Oderint, dum metuant.
In yet another twist to the pandemic that never stops surprising, I am sheltering from the rain with Ryan Tubridy on the bandstand of south Dublins Dún Laoghaire pier while the Late Late Show presenter quotes a Latin phrase he learned while attending private school at Blackrock College.
Oderint, dum metuant, he repeats, adding that his teacher Miss Fitzgerald always said this would be a good phrase to put on a banner at a schools rugby match. It means let them hate, provided they fear, Tubridy explains.
Were doing a strange kind of socially-distanced dance, moving around the bandstand trying to avoid the sideways rain. Hes shivering in his tweedy looking jacket and regulation Tubridy cords while I ensure the voice recorder on my phone doesnt get waterlogged.
I have yet to meet somebody who works in the area of chatshowery who doesnt have that streak of neediness and narcissism
Its my fault. Im the one who suggested a walk and also requested he recite a bit of Latin. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, he says, which apparently is from Virgils Aeneid and roughly translated means one day well look back on all of this and laugh.
Will we? I ask him, thinking about the pandemic. Well look back at the bonkers bits and laugh, and well raise a glass to the sad parts, he says.
There is probably no other Irish broadcaster who can quote Latin and divide opinion quite like Ryan Tubridy. For every person who raves about his Late Late Toy Show performances or celebrity interviews or commitment to causes such as domestic violence, there are others who have uncomplimentary, Alan Partridge-adjacent things to say about how he earns his nearly half a million euro a year salary.
But the punters on the pier from secondary school boys on an orienteering trip to a wheelchair user who gives him the thumbs up have an awful lot of love for the Late Late Show host. Were interrupted several times by Tubridy fans dying to say hello. Ive paid them all a fiver each to do that, he jokes, as yet another middle-aged woman gives him a wave. And I gave 50 to another fella to keep the abusers away.
These days Tubridy says he has thicker skin and is far less bothered by the haters. He long ago deleted the Twitter app from his phone preferring the friendlier banter on Instagram.
Show business is very like politics. We want as many viewers as we can get and as many listeners the way a politician needs to get elected to stay employed
He often comes to Dún Laoghaire for head-clearing walks. Honest about his narcissistic tendencies I have yet to meet somebody who works in the area of chatshowery, who doesnt have that streak of neediness and narcissism he thrives on all the shy waves and polite requests for selfies from walkers delighted to spot the tall, rangy figure with the famous face.
Watching him work the crowd is not unlike watching a veteran politician on the campaign trail. Its in the DNA, he says. The Tubridy family is steeped in Fianna Fáil politics. His grandfather was political activist Todd Andrews, his uncles were former Fianna Fáil TDs David and Niall Andrews. Show business, he says, is very like politics. We want as many viewers as we can get and as many listeners the way a politician needs to get elected to stay employed. Its how I survive, I just happen to really like it as well.
We are meeting for a stroll and a chat a few days before Tubridy presented the final Late Late Show of the strangest season in the shows nearly 60-year history. The late broadcaster Gay Byrne Tubridys friend and mentor broke a lot of ground in Irish broadcasting but never had to present that televisual juggernaut in the middle of a pandemic.
Fridays nights final show, featuring Katie Taylor and Irish Olympians, also coincided with Tubridys 48th birthday. Reflecting on his work since Covid began in March 2020 I suggest that, for many viewers and listeners, his morning radio programme and the Late Late Show were like ports in a pandemic storm.
It was not planned, he says. But we started getting a lot of thank you letters from people the Late Late Show became this kind of signpost in the fog. A sign that said its Friday night, were all lost. I was lost, like everyone else. I think thats what helped. I completely understood. It was so traumatic for everyone. So confusing. And there was so much uncertainty. No job as a chatshow host is going to make you understand that any better. So you could only try to comprehend with everyone else. We were all walking along this path.
Ryan Tubridy preparing his questions on the Late Late Show set. Photograph: Aidan Crawley
He credits the radio show team under producer Siobhán Hough and his Late Late producers Katherine Drohan and Jane Murphy with providing crucial guidance. They were very thoughtful. And they were leaders. I followed their advice and suddenly the Late Late Show became a bigger ship than its been for a long time.
He and the team found themselves, on any given week, checking the national mood, asking where are they? meaning wheres Ireland?
I gauged it on the radio from week to week theyre angry, theyre really pissed off, we needed to reflect that. Another week, youd say theyre impatient, youd feel it then another week, it was theyre so fed up. I remember saying that to Dr Anthony Fauci, talk to me about fed-uppery. They were so fed up that they needed a release and a relief, music. Something.
On the Late Late Show we were saying to the audience: here we are, try not to be so despondent because they are working on it but in the meantime well be here for you. It was that sort of vibe. Heres Hozier. Heres Dr Tony Holohan like a radio dial, it went up and down to reflect and channel the mood of the country.
There were other more practical concerns. Would the show actually go on? Would guests turn up? Would there be enough material? How would needy Tubridy cope without a live studio audience?
Sure look at me, with an ego like this youd need an audience, he laughs. Initially, I thought, okay, this is a novelty. Then that evolved and now its like a radio show. Which is quite nice actually.
Ive always believed that Im a private man. In a public job. I think theres only so much you can give of yourself
When the fundraising aspect of the pandemic Late Late Shows emerged, with viewers raising millions for Covid-hit charities such as St Vincent de Paul, he says the programme became more meaningful, more useful than just doing a chatshow.
He mentions the Late Late Toy Show break-out stars such as young Adam King, who has brittle bone disease, and talented teenage singer Michael Moloney, who became symbols of hope and cheer at a dark time. The Toy Show Appeal was only mentioned, he recalls, three times during that show but 6.5 million was raised. The glorious memory of it still brings Tubridy joy. During the pandemic, Late Late Show viewers raised an astonishing 20 million for charity. Its staggering and heartening, he says.
Tubridy contracted Covid-19 early on in the pandemic, as did his colleague Claire Byrne. How did you get it? Were you all out at some event together? I joke. No, he says. I dont know how I got it. He says while he was a bit wheezy, he got the lucky end of the Covid stick and those two weeks off were a beautiful time spent with his two daughters. It would have been much more difficult without them.
Throughout the lockdowns he has gone to RTÉ to work every day, rather than broadcast from home. He lives alone but says he wasnt lonely because he saw people at work and had constant company. He missed his family, their regular pub therapy sessions in Toners and ODonoghues. He missed his close mates the mostly Blackrock College boys who populate his friends WhatsApp group. Rugby types? No, he laughs. Dreamers. Music heads. Although one of them did play rugby and we still mock him for that.
We know, at a surface level, a lot about Ryan Tubridy. During the first 20 minutes of his daily radio show he riffs on everything from the books he is reading to the films he is watching to the stuff that irritates him people talking incessantly about their children and showing him videos on their phones are two of his latest bugbears. We know he loves The Beatles and jazz crooners and the daughters he shares with his former partner, RTÉ producer Ann-Marie Power.
He doesnt mention his daughters names on radio, deliberately, he tells me. I mean, Ive always believed that Im a private man. In a public job. I think theres only so much you can give of yourself.
Ryan Tubridy at the Dún Laoghaire pier, Co Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
I try to find out a bit more. He had a very privileged middle-class upbringing but his parents broke up when he was a child. I ask him how that experience shaped him.
I dont really talk about it because, you know, my mum is alive and well, he says. And I dont really like discussing what might have been a very difficult time for her. But I will say that, yeah, it wasnt the easiest time to be a kid and you worried and you wanted things to be better and fixed. And in due course they were fixed.
Ive had many different experiences in my life, all of which are personal and private and arent discussed… they allow me to understand people better. Because Im probably still trying to understand myself.
His parenting mantra with his own children over the years has been are you happy? If youre not happy, how can I fix it? As we look out on the boats by the pier, he says his eldest daughter is out of the harbour now and the younger one is on her way to the gate. I struck gold with my kids, he says.
Tubridys media career began with a letter published in this newspaper on February 20th, 1986 signed Ryan Tubridy, aged 12½,  very Adrian Mole he laughs. In the letter he complained that there were too few movies around for boys his age. The letter from that self-described little nerd, who would go on to be the compere of school concerts, got him noticed by RTÉ, which asked him to review films and books on childrens TV programmes such as Anything Goes and Poparama.
Later, while at UCD he toyed with pursuing law but says he took a look around Kings Inns and found it too pompous even for me. He began working as a runner on Gerry Ryans radio show, working up to his own radio offerings The Full Irish and Morning Glory. On TV he presented the Rose of Tralee and Tubridy Tonight. He landed the Late Late Show gig in 2009.
There might be a perception of me that its all very silver spoon and Blackrock College. But that doesnt mean you dont have emotional experiences that can inform you as a person
I thought Miriam OCallaghan or Gerry Ryan would get it, they were in the mix. I was quite certain it wasnt going to be me. I just thought I was too young and maybe I was.
Does he really think so? Looking back? Yeah, I think I had a lot more living to do, a lot more learning.
I ask if he feels he used to put on more of an act. Yeah. I thought it was my job to be a presenter. And then I realised you can be both the person and the presenter. And the ratio changes. So it was a time where youd have to put on the presenter hat, a rather large 10 gallon hat. And now it fits more neatly and the lines have blurred a bit more between on-air and off-air.
There might be a perception of me that its all very silver spoon and Blackrock College and everything like that. But that doesnt mean you dont have emotional experiences throughout your nearly 50 years that can inform you as a person and allow you [as a presenter] to know how to deal with other peoples trauma, or emotional turmoil.
The death of Tubridys father, a psychiatrist, seven years ago caused him a bit of an existential crisis. Has he ever had therapy?
No, I havent. I tried a bit of therapy once. I sat down with somebody about three times. And it wasnt for me. And Ill tell you why. I couldnt get out of the chatshow guest mode. So that was unfortunate. I thought I should try it because everyone talks about it so, yeah, I have to work out my stuff myself.
Has he worked it out? I think were all complex creatures, and Im no more, no less complex than anyone else. Peoples lives are a collection of joys and difficulties.
His parents separation remains one of the great, great difficulties of my life I dont dwell on all of these things too much. Because I think that you have to get on with things. You have to be quite stoical. Otherwise you could get quite dark.
One thing we all know about Tubridy is that hes always been a young fogey and he says he is now happily an old fogey. He describes himself as old school like his late father. He lights a log fire in his house nearly every day; he enjoys fly fishing on lakes and corduroy trousers. He has a nursery palette with no taste for fine dining, preferring the plain food of his childhood.
He draws the line at going much deeper than all that.
You have to live a very different life in some respects, he reflects, thinking about how he navigates fame. Its all part of this bizarre deal. If you want to present the Late Late then you have to give up certain freedoms. And if you dont want to present it, then go work in a bank, do whatever you want to do. So Ive given up a few things and Ive got the best job in show business. And I love it slightly more now than I might have done before. The best way to keep my privacy is to not talk about stuff. Do you see where I am going with this?
Im just saying, this is all I have for you. Im just gonna tell it as it is
Yes. I do. But I have a go anyway. Is he in a relationship at the moment?
I respectfully close that down. I say that in a way that is really straight with you. Before I would have tried to evade or prevaricate and now I say that door is not going to open.
Does he have any regrets in his life?
I have plenty of regrets but none to share. Ive become a very different presenter in the last two years. Because Im just saying, this is all I have for you. Im just gonna tell it as it is if you dont like it. Ill pack my bags. He is grateful that his RTÉ career has allowed him to do everything his boyhood self could have possibly dreamed of, from visiting US presidents in the White House and going to Roald Dahls writing shed to writing books himself and meeting musical heroes such as Paul McCartney.
Regarding his often criticised salary, he says: The market decides how that works. My agent talks to the bosses in RTÉ and they say thats what hes getting or he can leave. So I dont really get into it because Im on a hiding to nothing if I do. Ill leave that one.
When the Late Late Show returns in September, Tubridy hopes to draw a line under Covid. We want it to have a completely different vibe.
Im rapidly running out of fuel, he tells yet another passerby who engages him in chat. I remind him that the other day on the radio he used the word extraordinary around six times in the space of a couple of minutes. There were no other words left in the word drawer, he says.
Ive never run a marathon in my life. I will never run a marathon in my life, right? But I see the runners on the TV and you know that bit at the end where their legs are going to jelly as they reach the finish line and somebody is waiting for them with a really big roll of what looks like tinfoil? Well on Friday night I will fall into that big roll of tinfoil and be put in a cab and sent off home.
Festina lente. Thats another Latin phrase he learned at Blackrock College, one he says he now wishes hed taken on board earlier in his career.
Festina Lente means make haste slowly, he says. Its lovely. I really like that.